Hi all,
I currently have a contact order in place that sets out the days, times and frequency I see my daughter which is currently at the stage where I have overnight contact with her on alternative weekends (from 10 am Saturday until 4 pm Sunday). However, over the previous few months my ex-partner has often cancelled or shortened contact at the last minute (usually via text message Friday evening / Saturday morning). She has now said that my 5 year old daughter is anxious about overnight contact so wants to regress to day contact. My daughter seems comfortable and happy in my company (and can provide numerous videos / pictures to the court) but with our present contact order of her only spending 1 night out of 14 with me I could understand if there was any anxiety. However, I don't think that my ex-partners suggestion is a positive step and so I believe we should continue with overnight contact and look to expand on it but she is now refusing contact altogether.
Thanks in advance!
Hi,
Quite often a c79 enforcement application becomes a variation.
When was your final court hearing? I think in your position you may be better off doing a c100 and seek a variation with that. Your current order sounds very restrictive as it does not have the standard fri-sun every other weekend arrangements. You could look at expanding that, and other issues like you wanting to take child on holiday abroad etc or have child for half of school holidays etc.
With enforcement, you would not have to sit mediation. But with variation application, you would need to try mediation first.
@bill337 Hi Bill, thank you very much for coming back to me.
I tend to think that I am better off submitting the C100 form as suggested. Our current contact arrangement order has been in place for 2 years now and whilst it got me from very little contact to overnight contact there was a lot that was left open ended with the court hoping / expecting us to expand on contact outside of the order to include Friday-Sunday contact, holidays etc, without explicitly stating setting out dates from when this would occur.
I appreciate the reply as I was confused whether I needed to submit both a C79 and C100 or just one of them, but the C100 seems the best route as I want to improve on the current contact.